Introducing the Pullets to the Coop

We are in phase ii of introducing the little ones – three days shy of four months old, a month from laying? –  to the big girls. Their little coop has been sitting right next to the big one for over a week now, so the girls know each other. Because their run has screen on the bottom, we let the little ones out to free range quite often so they can take a dust bath. One day we also let the big ones out – a first for them! It was fun having them clucking around my feet as I hung laundry and worked in that part of the garden, but whenever the big ones came across the little ones there was pecking. Not too much, I think Amie was more frightened than the chicks. Still, we’re not repeating the experiment until we have a way of keeping them contained in this part of the garden (mainly keeping them off the lawn, which is just to the left in the picture).

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On the advice of a friend we sequestered the hens in the second run with a treat of cut-up squash, then moved the little ones into the first run. They were quite at a loss. I don’t think these two are very bright! Amie tried to get them to explore the coop, the roost, the nest boxes, but they might be afraid of heights or something? Anyway, it was fun.

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Above is Amie shoving Knocty into the coop. Oreo rules the landing.

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Funny chickens, with their whiskers.

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Amie loves to hold the gentle Nocty (there is some uncertainty about the spelling).

We left them in there for a couple of hours, during which I doubt they left their favorite spot, the “landing”. Then we restored all the chickens to their usual habitats. We’ll do this for a couple of days, then we’ll put the little ones in at night, as recommended by the books, for phase iii.

I also dug 12 lbs. of potatoes, which makes for a pretty good 1: 4.8 yield. Nice! Going by the plants, the other potato bed will yield more.

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More Kombucha Adventures

The kombucha SCOBY started as a quarter coin (the mother) in a store-bought bottle. I put it in a pint jar with Indian Chai, where it grew a second layer (SCOBY baby) on top which soon occupied the entire surface. Then I moved it again to a large cookie jar, where a third layer (SCOBY grandchild) quickly formed on top. That’s three layers. Here they are, peeled apart.

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I brewed four teas: one Indian Chai, an old Assam, a new Assam,  and one Irish Breakfast, each with 1/4 cup of cane sugar. Once they cooled down to room temperature we were ready to start brewing our first kombucha teas.

Handling the SCOBY, pulling it out of the jar and inspecting it for mold (none, it was very clean) was an interesting tactile experience. Organic is a good word. To know that it is a living, growing organism or rather, coalescing population of living organisms added to the awesomeness.  I then peeled the layers apart. That too was neat: they formed distinct layers (“generations,” in essence) which came away easily.

I put the first baby (the second layer) back into the now very acidic brew that the SCOBY had been growing in (adding some tea and sugar) as a hedge in case the other mothers perish in their new jars. Then I put the original mother (oldest and smallest generation) into the Irish Breakfast. I cut the third, largest and newest layer, into three and put each piece into the Assams and the Indian Chai. Each SCOBY was accompanied by a cup of the original, acidic brew.

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Like this, I see, if they all thrive, I’ll have lots of SCOBYs to give away!

Gift of Abundance

We had a full, full house this weekend, with SIL and friends visiting and dropping off their daughter for a week’s holiday at what Amie and I now lovingly call “Camp Boredom,” a.k.a. “Camp Mama.”  The addition of one has skyrocketed the ratings of this camp for both participants and organizer. I listen in on their play, only see them for meals and snacks. Put two single children who have known each other since the birth of the youngest together: sparks fly.

At the last meal before friends and SIL had to leave, I couldn’t resist. I debated whether I’d do it because I usually don’t make a show of my emotions, but here it was: “I’d like to make a toast!”

Here’s to sharing abundance with friends.

Forking up the mostly local food on the table, basking in the finally perfect temperature under the umbrella in our backyard, looking around the table at the smiles and laughter and deep, deep ease of the company, I had that feeling that I get a lot these days: this is the sweet spot and somehow I get to live in it! What follows is gratitude, clean and joyful, coupled with a little bit of the less bright how-did-I-deserve-this?

Reading Charles Eisenstein’s Sacred Economics I am expanding my insights into this complex set of emotions (if that’s what they are). I have so many thoughts on the subject, it boggles my mind like any convoluted metaphysics. It’s a sheer gift and you know you’ll never be able to repay it but that shouldn’t stop you from working hard to maintain it, to keep the giving going.

I’m learning more and more that joy is the key to this. Eisenstein says something that turns even the most tragic catastrophe of this world into a gasping realization:

We live in special times. There are seven billion of us, all gathered at the same time. Sometimes I think that every human being who has ever lived is now incarnated here for the big party, for the big transition.

I don’t take that literally as I don’t believe in reincarnation, but I appreciate the thought and the what-if sentiment of it. It makes me a little more ready for the challenge. It also makes me think that, that I am one of the lucky ones who gets to gather with happy friends around a table loaded with wholesome food, should inspire me not to guilt but to gratitude, which is the only place from which full giving in return is possible.

To fully receive is an act of generosity. To fully give is an act of self-care and self-nurture.

Heat Wave Foods

We’re (hopefully) at the tail end of the second  heat wave of the summer. The house, after accumulating heat over the past days, hit 88 at 3 pm, with 70% humidity. Outside, in the shade, it reached 97F (36C) . But it seems I’ve acclimatized. I wouldn’t say that I was comfortable, but it was bearable to do some chores inside and out, like feeding the hens, hanging the laundry on the line. Around 5 I headed outside to water the garden and to harvest some more beans, etc.

Yesterday I spent two hours in the afternoon weeding the haricots verts bed and harvesting 3 lbs. of beans. That evening, Amie and I enjoyed a meal almost entirely grown on our property (all except the butter, salt and pepper):

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The kombucha mother is loving the hot weather. Compare:

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Kombucha mother yesterday

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Kombucha mother today

It smells divine. I can’t wait to brew me some tea.

 

 

Ferments: Kombucha and Melomel

The Melomel – mead with raspberries – seemed ready to be bottled. There were no more bubbles coming up through the mess of bleached raspberries on top. The one gallon yielded three bottles, here posing in my darkened desk area (another heat wave is upon us).

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This is the mash: the color was almost completely transferred from the berries to the liquid.

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The kombucha mother too was ready for the next step: I transferred it to a larger container and added tea and sugar. It’s about 1/8″ thick. Once it covers the wider surface in the new container and has thickened a little more, it’ll be ready for making kombucha tea and sharing.

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In the image below you can see the original plug from the bottle I bought at the grocery store. The rest grew around it.

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A Berry Berry Day

What a GREAT day.

I was up at 3 am when Amie was coughing and then had trouble falling asleep, all the things I had to do running through my mind. Then the alarm rang at 6:30  and at 7 am I was at the Community Garden Plots, which no longer looked pristine like they did June. The thousand beans we had seeded had been chomped down to the ground and the heat and humidity had favored the weeds, both the mints and green weeds in the field and the woodies like bittersweet and gigantic pokeweed along the fence. In fact, the plots looked worse than how we found them at the beginning of the season. It was very discouraging.

(So far it doesn’t sound like a great day, and I’m not fond of sarcasm, so…)

Three friends showed up with a lawn mower and an array of gardening tools and what followed was two hours of pulling, chopping, hacking, mowing and chatting and laughing. In the end we had two huge compost piles of weeds, hands that won’t get clean with even the most vigorous scrub, and a plot that’s again ready to go. What a difference: we wowed ourselves and each other! And I didn’t take a picture, neither before nor after.

Now it’ll be a race against the weeds to find and sow buckwheat, which we decided to put in to smother the weeds and improve the soil. This season we won’t be growing any edible crop anymore, but at least we can make the best preparations for next year. I’ve been calling and leaving messages at the local farms asking for a stray 15 lbs of buckwheat seeds. We’re also going to start plotting some serious fencing.

I came home and gardened (weeded) in my own garden, then my friend L. came by with yet another quart of home-picked raspberries, and I gladly gave her some more kale and also six eggs. Then my friend R. came by and brought beautiful bouquet of flowers from her garden (she knows I don’t grow flowers for their prettiness).

Then Amie and I met a bunch of yet other friends at a local school and all of us (four adults, three kids) picked  at least eight quarts of blueberries. What a treasure! We couldn’t stop thanking the landscape designer who decided on these berries! (And also the masses of rosa rugosa with huge hips ripening). The kids just couldn’t stop picking and eating. They could have gone on for hours. We brought home three quarts and one pint.

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So much treasure! Weeds, flowers, berries, and friends. I am the luckiest person on the Earth.

{UPDATE} 7/12: We went blueberry picking again and then I had enough to make twenty-six half pints of jam, mostly blueberry and some blueberry/raspberry.

Kombucha

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Here’s another experiment in fermenting fun: kombucha.

After several unsuccessful tries to get a kombucha mother (a SCOBY – a symbiotic community of bacteria and yeasts) from friends, and the usual apathy and mistrust when eyeing mothers for sale on the internet (ha), I found myself at the refrigerated case of kombucha and other such drinks at Whole Foods. Checking out a bottle of Synergy Drinks Organic and Raw Kombucha, I found the mother still in it and thought: what’s to lose?

I did some research on the net and found this article, on how to make kombucha from a store-bought drink, and its accompanying article, that the method no longer works, because after the great kombucha recall of 2010, manufacturers reformulated the drinks, making it “virtually impossible to grow a kombucha scoby from a store-bought bottle of kombucha anymore.”

Well, I tried it anyway, and the mother is growing!

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The fat quarter-sized disk in the left of the jar is the mother that came from the bottle. The rest is new growth!

Raspberry Mead – Melomel

The mead is ready. The bubbles stopped rising, the liquid is clear, and at the bottom of each 1 gallon jug is this:

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Graveyard of a gazillion dead yeasts

DH likes the taste of it and had a whole glass while racking. I like it sweeter, so I racked one jar into a new jar with about a quart of freshly picked (local) raspberries and four tablespoons of honey. This officially makes it a melomel.

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That should send it through one more round of fermentation and then I’ll bottle it.

The other jar I’ll bottle as is, to let it finish fermenting in the bottle, which will give it some extra fizz.